It’s abundantly clear that some strange, inexplicable, rhetoric swirls around the chaos of what to do about our immigration system. The negative consequences of uncontrolled illegal immigration are obvious and easily seen by anyone caring to pay a little attention.
They include:
• Extreme pressure on federal and state taxpayer-supported social programs such as schools, food stamps, housing, hospitals, unemployment payments, etc. Leftist politicians tout that illegals contribute more to the economy than they take. This is patently absurd and based on nothing.
Consider that children of illegals comprise one-fifth to one-quarter of Los Angeles Unified School District children at a statewide cost of $12 billion (Breitbart, Jan. 18, 2019). The Atlanta Journal Constitution (Aug. 17, 2010) previously reported similar numbers of $44.5 billion nationwide and $10.8 billion in California. The children, whether citizens or not, are fully eligible for and a huge burden for federal and state programs like food stamps, housing and Medi-Cal.
• Increased crime throughout America. Leftist politicians would claim that illegals commit crimes at rates far below that of citizens — another absurd assertion. Illegals represent one-fifth to one-third (one-fifth in federal prisons according to first-quarter 2018 Homeland Security) of our prison populations but only one-15th to one-30th of the total population.
• A national drug crisis. Statistics confirm that about 300 overdose drug deaths occur in the United States each week. That’s 15,000 or more deaths per year and more deaths over the last five years than from the Vietnam War. By any measure, this is a national tragedy and emergency. Hard drugs manufactured, imported and sold in the U.S. by the Mexican drug cartels include cocaine and heroin and have graduated to more deadly forms like Fentanyl. Some enterprising cartel associates have learned that great profits can be made by selling sugar water disguised as prescription drugs.
Almost all illegal drugs come into America across our southern border. The Left claims that 90 percent of such illegal contraband is intercepted at points-of-entry, therefore there’s no need to search for drugs in other areas. It’s absurd to profess that Mexican drug lords are so inept that they only try to smuggle drugs through areas of concentrated maximum scrutiny.
• Human trafficking. Each year multi-thousands of human beings, mostly young children, are smuggled across our southern border to end up as virtual slaves in sweat shops or brothels. This is a national disgrace but receives minute mention from the Left.
• Remittances to other nations. Many illegal crossers regularly send money back to their home countries. Some of these remittances pay coyotes trafficking people from Central America and Mexico. Breitbart reports (January 2019), from World Bank data, such payments total $53.4 billion annually. For some countries, this represents a significant 15-20 percent of national GDP. This exacerbates our balance of trade problem, dampening U.S. internal growth. It incentivizes receiving countries to generate more illegal crossings, thus ridding themselves of poorer citizens.
With the obvious negative impacts of illegal immigration, why aren’t all politicians beating the “let’s solve this problem” drum? Instead we have Nancy Pelosi’s group declaring that building a wall, helping law enforcement, is “immoral” and we should abolish law enforcement.
Ten years ago, the Democrats’ message was different. Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama once gave speeches citing immigration evils identical to present-day Donald Trump’s.
So what changed? Some maintain that the Democrats realized a need to import a large population of voters who’ll be seduced by “free-stuff” promises, thus keeping the Democrats in power. It’s certainly part of the equation.
There’s another factor that’s seldom mentioned. The business of smuggling contraband, human and drugs, across our southern border is extremely lucrative, generating tens of billions of profit dollars yearly to drug cartels. From the cartels’ perspectives, this must be protected and the best way to effect that protection is to ensure that the border remains open. Thus it’s not at all surprising to imagine that significant cartel dollars could find their way into the pockets and campaigns of politicians willing to support the open-borders agenda.
From the voters’ perspective, all open-border politicians should be regarded with suspicion as to how much support is a result of cartel donations. This applies, notably, to senior leadership of the Democrats’ party and virtually all the declared presidential candidates down to lesser lights, knowingly or unknowingly.
Such politicians and the complicit media will say there are no cases of cartel money being detected in U.S. politics. While this may be true, the basic nature of cartel support for politicians perforce is hidden and hard to detect.
California’s 25th Congressional District Rep. Katie Hill speaks of Trump’s “silly wall,” despite the fact that walls have been and are spectacularly effective.
Is Katie Hill working for her constituents’ sovereignty or for the open-border negatives?
John Weaver is a Valencia resident. “Right Here, Right Now” appears Saturdays and rotates among several local Republicans.
